The Official Unofficial Photographer

Latest News

It may not have escaped your notice that things are looking a little sparse around here at the moment. With ice hockey well into it's summer break, we've decided to have a bit of a clean up of the website; this has meant the vast majority of news and match reports from the 2017/18 season has now been removed. However, the two exclusive stories that we broke back in October will remain until the start of the new season in September 2018 - if you can't remember these or haven't seem them before, just scroll down.

In the 'Galleries' section, we've added a couple of Roller Derby bouts from last year that, by some technical error, had been missed off that section when they were taken. We've also added a section for Essex recreational hockey team Chelmsford MisChiefs, some of whose games we covered last year, and hope to bring you more of them this year. Alongside these, there's also a new section for 'Other Photos'. Here we'll post photos from anything else we attend. Currently, there are some nice animal photos from Colchester Zoo.

Autumn will soon be upon us, so it shouldn't be too long until we start updating the 'Latest News' page with whatever updates we can find. We'll also endeavor to find some more subjects for interviews. Once the hockey season starts up again, we hope to bring you all the action shots from all Chelmsford Chieftains and Chelmsford Cobras home games and as many of the away games as the real world will allow us to attend. In the mean time, a massive thank you to everyone who's followed and supported us, commented, liked, and shared our photos; spoken to us and generally interacted with us over the last couple of seasons, whether it be in person, via our website, twitter, or facebook pages, we really do appreciate it.

For now, enjoy the summer sunshine, stay safe, and we'll see you in September.

Steve

25 October 2017

#Snackgate

During the early part of this week another ruckus has been unfolding over on social media site Twitter.

It all started with self confessed hockey nerd Laurence Thorn making an innocent comment about getting to meet a couple of people at a game, and his pledge to meet media mogul Nancy of 482days.com. Things took a turn for the worse, however, when the Oxfordshire based reporting team accused Laurence of giving chips a higher priority than meeting them.

There then followed a lengthy debate as to whether salt and vinegar, a staple for any fish and chip connoisseur, was acceptable on not only chips, but also crisps. While most people (we’ll call them the sensible ones) accepted that salt and vinegar was essential on chips, many felt that adding those condiments to crisps was paramount to sacrilege.

This, in turn, led to the debate turning to the colouring of crisp packets and should salt and vinegar crisps have blue or green packets. While the sensible ones agree that salt and vinegar should be blue, and that Walkers only took the decision to make theirs green and cheese and onion flavour blue was to trick people into eating the vileness that is salt and vinegar crisps. Indeed, there were one or two that thought salt and vinegar crisps should be indicated by a green packet.

Just for a chuckle, however, we decided to throw into the “Snackgate” debate that chips should be accompanied by gravy - nice, thick gravy. While this didn’t elicit much of a reaction, it did further the debate onto mushy peas. “Disgusting things”, said one commenter, “just the thought of them makes me shudder” mentioned another, and a new movement was born - Hockey Against Mushy Peas (HAMPs). 482days actually called them - and I quote! “Spawn of the devil” While Ivor McDonald wondered if mushy peas were the devil child of a tryst between a battered sausage and a spam fritter. Meanwhile, Ice Hockey LGBTQ wondered if I was someone who put mint sauce on mushy peas. Exactly where that came from and what kind of person they think I am to do such a thing, I swear I have no idea! At which point someone mentioned that they were too young to have enjoyed a Spam fritter. Well. We all know that the words “Spam” and “enjoyed” should never, ever be used in the same sentence. All of a sudden, #oneNIHL tried to start a war by opening up the “rolls/barmcakes/baps” debate. Of course, they’re called BARMCAKES, as everyone knows.

Justin Wilson, rink announcer at Bracknell Hornets games, reminisced about someone he once saw eating avocado and chicken on Ryvita at a game. The conversation went quiet for a while, possibly due to the shock of what people had just read. While Dynamo’s Wallbanger Mike Wright mentioned he’d recently seen a man at the London v Invicta game a couple of weeks ago eating a tub of something resembling chicken curry and chips with a wooden spoon. “Outrageous!”, cried Ivor McDonald.

Once things had quietened down a bit, and everyone thought they were safe, up popped the yellow laptop brigade from 428days again and threw a prawn sandwich in the works. I mean, a PRAWN sandwich? In ice hockey? We’ve always been a keen supporter of everything 482days does, but a prawn sandwich?

It has to be said that while the whole of Snackgate was going on, all was quiet from Camp Carrsy, who we assumed was sitting nicely in the corner out of sight taking notes for next week’s Pro Hockey News round up. When all of a sudden, the big girls blouse popped up and said he’d had a salad for lunch. How mean is that, depriving all of those raw Big Macs and raw bacon sandwiches of their food. #oneNIHL told Mr Carr in no uncertain terms that “you don’t win friends with salad!”

Oh but then there’s the “red sauce or brown sauce on a bacon buttie” debate…….

11 October 2017

**BREAKING NEWS** 482days.com Takes #piamg National

Fans of NIHL South were this week left reeling with the shocking news that ice hockey media outlet 482days.com was taking their score predictions competition "piamg" nationwide by including NIHL North games into the mix.

The competition for prize mugs, which has been running since 2015, is a Twitter based lottery that sees competitors guess the total amount of goals scored in National Ice Hockey League games over each weekend. It was announced on Twitter on Monday morning that there would be a change of rules for the competition which would see the number of games doubled thus making the job of predicting the total number of goals scored twice as hard.

It's fair to say that fans in the South were incensed by the decision and were more than happy to voice their thoughts to us. Justin Wilson, Social Media guru and match night rink announcer for Bracknell Hornets told us "Well having 3 mugs already, one of each variety, I'm glad this has happened, there's now more people involved to laugh at Laurence Thorn for dropping his." While Invicta Dynamos fan Marc Stelfox rubbed it in a bit more saying "I can drop one of mine and it won't smash cos it's made of metal. Just saying."

Once he'd got over the shock of Justin's rebuke, Laurence told us that "Now the North is involved maybe Carrsy will start entering."

London Raiders team physio and official match night Tweeter Michelle Spight dropped her stash of match night Haribo when she heard the news. Picking up the wayward Tangfastics she said "Northerners will do anything for a freebie - including begging Nancy to let them be involved with PIAMG!"

Dynamos Wallbanger and video game shop manager Mike Wright threw the latest wireless xBox controller at his shops plasma screen TV in disgust as the news broke, saying "I waited two years to win a bloody 482days PIAMG mug and now she's gone and changed the bloody rules! I'm not a happy hedgehog!" Carl Huxted, also a Wallbanger, speculated that "Nancy thought PIAMG had become far too easy after Mike won one" Michelle Spight also added that "it's a good job Mike has won one already cos now Nancy's changed the rules he doesn't stand a chance with such a big audience."

It wasn't all doom and gloom in the South, though, as blogger, novelist and Streatham/Bracknell/Guildford fan Jules Cliff said "Fingers crossed this will include the Elite, all levels of NIHL and womens hockey because hockey is for everyone. PIAMG is for everyone. You can never have enough mugs in UK hockey. Hoorah for Nancy." Jules then went off to write another short story for her blog which probably saw another poor unsuspecting character meet an early and untimely demise.

To try and increase their exposure up North, 482days.com have used their large marketing budget to hire a yellow bus with PIAMG branding on the outside. "I thought it was the Charlestown Chiefs Booster club in town" said Jon Tarbuck. "It pulled up outside Blackburn Arena and got wedged on a bollard. I missed my daughters Christening as a result. Whoever 482 days are, they are not welcome in my town thats for sure"

"I dont know who this 482 days character is but if she is giving away free mugs that will be canny' said Billingham fan Steven Baker. "I've had a Cleveland Bombers mug since 1989 and, while I'm not a fan of yellow crockery, if its free I am all over it"

While we did manage to speak to some other folk North of Watford Gap, other than a few mumbles of "By 'Eck" and "Eh oop chuck" most of it was too strange to translate into Southern, even for Native Northerners like us. While a chap in a flat cap and clogs sitting on Wigan Pier just asked what flavour pies they made.

"It's typical of 482 Days to include the North as an afterthought" said David Carr of Pro Hockey News. "If their media wagon goes any further North than Milton Keynes they have a warning light come up on their dashboard. That said, I have a 482 days mug from last year and it copes with the hard water down here in London very well. We know all Northerners are hard as nails so it should be able to withstand a good solid grip and a brew of any kind"

Nancy Carpenter, 482days supremo, was unavailable for comment at the time of writing. But they're no stranger to controversy, once threatening to make PIAMG a subscription only competition. Following a regionwide outcry, they tried to laugh it off saying it was an "April Fools prank". One thing is for sure, if these mugs start heading North, then the Southerners will be revolting.